Review Summary

Paul Verhoeven’s supremely vulgar romp “Black Book” takes off in September 1944. A young Jewish woman, the unsinkable Rachel Stein — played with ferocious energy by the Dutch actress Carice van Houten — has been squirreling herself away with a Christian farm family when an American bomber blows their house to smithereens. Having first earned international attention with crudely effective Dutch entertainments like “Soldier of Orange,” Mr. Verhoeven went Hollywood, starting in the late 1980s, with increasingly slicker, steadily less effective entertainments like “Basic Instinct” and “Showgirls.” “Black Book” is the first film he has shot in his native country in more than 20 years, and it shows in its vigor. Written by Mr. Verhoeven and his sometimes screenwriter, Gerard Soeteman, “Black Book” encompasses the best and very worst of its director’s signature pulp brutalism, which means it’s pretty much a hoot. — Manohla Dargis